


Armour and Ashes

by WindStainedDreams



Series: What We Rarely See [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Fire Emblem Femslash Week 2016, Gen, I blame the urn in the barracks, Tumblr Prompt, Wakes & Funerals, armour, fefemslashweek2016, pyre, rarepairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7910881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindStainedDreams/pseuds/WindStainedDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severa had her own armour, but that didn't mean she didn't need her mother's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Armour and Ashes

Severa stood by, silent and still as a stone as the final rituals were performed. Moving and talking didn’t matter right now, and they were not needed of her. The clerics were quiet as they said the prayers and blessings meant to cleanse her mother’s soul on its journey to Naga, seeming to sense that to be loud might shatter the statue watching them. The brush of cloth against cloth and feet over stone mixed with the low chanting to wash over Severa and leave her reeling. There was no calm for the simmering grief eating at her heart, and Severa was tired of fighting it. Still, she stood and watched. 

Her mother’s body had been returned from the battlefield, which was rare in these times. Severa knew that she was one of the lucky ones, able to actually perform this ritual farewell for her mother, since so many of her friends had had to mourn an empty pyre. Severa herself had had to mourn an empty flame next to her mother when Lon’qu died and left her fatherless, his body lost to the fields of Risen. Still, it was cold comfort to see her mother laying in the bath. Lucina and the others had tried to comfort her, but not even Kjelle, who was closer than a sister, could break the marble skin guarding Severa from the world. Now, they stood off to the side, some silent, others weeping, Brady praying in his raspy voice, a counterpoint to the melody of the nameless clerics. He had offered earlier to lead the ceremony, but Maribelle and Chrom had said it would be better if Libra would perform the ceremony, having fought with her mother for years. All that was left was to wait for it all to be over so Severa could stop being stone. 

Severa remembered how the wounds looked, scars old and new, wounds still healing although her mother fought on. The final wound was nothing compared to what the Falcon Knight had survived before. It looked fairly simple, like a small little cut that shouldn’t have killed the legendary Cordelia. But poison didn’t have to go deep to kill. And now her mother truly would be nothing more than a legend, a person talked about in awed whispers. Severa hated it. 

The scented oils and burning herbs stung at Severa, making her nauseous. She knew that the only reason her mother got the full ritual was because she was such a hero. It was unfair; others couldn’t have the luxury being wasted even now. All oils burned and Cordelia wouldn’t care for the sweetness. Severa knew that her mother would have protested the grandeur, but it was impossible to argue with Sully or most of her mother’s remaining friends. Sully in particular wanted to lay Cordelia to rest properly, and while the ceremony felt empty to Severa, she couldn’t deny Sully her right to mourn her lover the way she needed to, even if she was stealing her mother away one last time. 

Cordelia was raised from the oil bath, and gently brought over to the bier that would carry her to the pyre. Severa was confused at first that her mother’s armour was being stripped off her, having thought that it would be burned with her, turning to slag, as it had been purified for the flames. She couldn’t understand why it would be removed from her mother, and the look of Cordelia without it was disturbing on a level that Severa could not begin to express. The armour should be staying with her mother, to protect her one last time on her way to rest, but instead that was being taken from her too. Then she was angered, because she could not be stone if she was drowning. Tears blurred her vision, of rage and grief, and so it was a moment before she saw who was accepting the armour from the clerics. 

Sully. 

Of course Sully would want to keep what had protected her lover with her in this blasted world, it would be the one kind of sentimentality the paladin would allow herself, because she could pretend it would be to save the armour to use, even if she never would. And it was entirely in her right as the one closest to Cordelia to keep her choice of memento. It still burned in Severa’s chest, that even this piece of her mother wouldn’t be hers to keep. 

Sully’s sobs were muffled and ugly and Severa couldn’t find any sympathy in her heart as her mother’s body was taken up and carried outside to the courtyard. Severa followed Sully and Libra as the rest of the survivors gathered behind, fanning out to surround the pyre that would carry Cordelia's soul to a more peaceful realm. The logs were rough, hewn from broken buildings and dead trees, nothing like what it should have been. Still, in this small forgotten place where they could be safe for a few days, it was all they could do for the hero. Sully held her mother’s chest plate, hugging it as if it would give one last embrace, and Severa turned away. None of this was right, and suddenly, the torch that was in her hand was exactly what Severa wanted. The fire that would burn to consume her mother had already ravaged the world, why was there any of it left to still be ripped out from under the young woman was a mystery. She wanted to fling the fire in Sully’s face. Severa felt scorched by the heat of everything crumbling around her, and burned to have the others feel as empty and dead as she felt. 

Kjelle was the one who stepped up and pushed her forward to light the pyre. Severa suddenly couldn’t stand the touch of the young woman, despite the years they had been close. Kjelle’s mother was taking everything from Severa and Severa would have nothing left after this. As the torch caught the old wood and smoke seeped into the dusk, Severa stood right next to the pyre. Slowly the others came up to the pyre, Sully, Chrom, Lucina, one by one they took up a torch from Libra, were blessed and added it to the flames. Everyone was saying their goodbyes and stepping around her and retreating to safety to wail and grieve in ones and twos and groups. Severa stayed where she was, watching as her mother left her behind again. 

There was one thing even Sully could not take from her, after stealing her mother’s armour and her love and her life. Severa knew that when the pyre burned out and her mother was with Naga, at least she would have the ashes. It would suit the ashes in her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the tumblr fefemslashweek2016 event celebrating femslash in Fire Emblem. Check out the tumblr tag for more works.


End file.
